Tim explained. ‘He’s the local TD, Grace. Ah, you’ve heard of him. He used to be Justice Minister. Resigned in disgrace a few years ago?’ I shrugged, prompting Tim to sigh, ‘God, you’re young.’
I didn’t care about politics, but I watched with interest as Liam dealt with his irate constituents. His accent betrayed his origins in the farming heartlands, and he was a good herder of words. When he made a point, it was like a bolt sliding home, neat and precise. He was a constant fidgeter, and handled others with as much ease as he did himself. Women, of course – he was an expert at the hand to the small of the back, of the sincere hand-clasp – but men too he touched warmly in conversation, a hand on the arm, on the shoulder, and they were easy with it, pleased even. He listened patiently to everyone’s complaints, but invariably turned back to the bar – to me – with a dark grin and a generous rolling of the eyes.
*
It turned out I was doing better than most of my former classmates. I wasn’t on the dole, at least. As Music Composition graduates, we were not the most practical souls. We tended to be on the precious side; my classmates would emerge grinning from three straight hours’ piano practice, invoking the ‘better than sex’ chestnut. My own relationship with the piano was less romantic; I treated it like a horse I was trying to break in. My father had always chastised me for that.
Growing up, Jen had always been the better pianist. She’d made it – a successful stint with the National Symphony Orchestra, a score for a worldwide smash-hit Irish dance show. Then she had Ruán and devoted herself to motherhood full-time. She always insisted it was her choice, but I was sceptical; Ruán’s father was on tour in Asia, and there was no suggestion of him putting his career on hold.
Our father had taught us both – we’d compete for space next to him on the piano bench. I’d stare mesmerised at his hands, at the curly gold hairs on his wrists. And I was a hesitant player from the start. ‘Eyes up!’ he would say. ‘Don’t overthink it. Skip, skip, skip along.’ Dad never hinted at Jen’s superiority, and so made her determined to prove it, over and over.
It shouldn’t have surprised me that she would shield her contacts jealously. ‘I’ll put in a good word for you,’ she’d say, ‘if I get around to it.’ Then, when I reminded her: ‘Jesus, I’m already putting you up – would you have a bit of patience?’ Other times, over wine: ‘I’m just not sure you’d suit the National Symphony Orchestra! All that rigid discipline? You’re a different sort of musician, Grace.’
At night I lay on my back in the spare bedroom, sometimes woken by Ruán’s thready cries, Jen’s awards shadowy on the shelves above. I resigned myself to teaching children in their living rooms as pushy parents hovered in the doorway.
*
A slow night in the bar turned into a sing-song, and I found myself at the piano. It needed a tune-up, but I was able to work around that. I played one of Chopin’s trippier pieces, showing off, revelling in the looks I drew. It was so different from playing in draughty practice halls. I didn’t even feel like a pianist. I felt like a seductive starlet in an old movie, draped over the back of a baby grand in a puddled cocktail dress. That’s right, and you all thought I was just a barmaid.
Then Liam was prevailed upon to sing a ballad that had been written about his late father, from whom Liam had inherited a name and a Dáil seat. ‘I don’t think I can follow that!’ he protested, but eventually he put his hands in his pockets, closed his eyes, and sang. It was more of a recital; his voice was nothing special. Still, it was mournful and deeply felt.
I said as much to Tim, who made a face. ‘He isn’t half the man his father was. It’s a good thing Liam Senior was long dead, God rest him, when Liam Junior resigned from cabinet. The shame would’ve killed him!’
‘Tim, that makes no sense.’
He poured a pint, yanking down the tap handle. ‘Ah, don’t be smart. He’s an amiable enough man, but I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him, the arrogant hoor.’
I caught Liam’s eye. He was looking at me intently, worrying his glasses in his hands. The weight of an admiring gaze was not unpleasant. He signalled for another whiskey.
‘That was something else, Grace.’
I poured him more than was strictly a measure. ‘Thanks. You too.’
He swatted at the air. ‘I’ve no voice, but that song still gets to me. We didn’t always get on but that man was my idol. Hard to believe it’s twelve years since he died . . .’
I didn’t know what to say. ‘I was ten,’ I said eventually.
He barked a laugh. ‘You’d hardly be expected to remember him so. Tell me something – what is it you want to do with yourself? Talent like that, you hardly want to stay behind a bar your whole life, working for that tyrant.’ Liam winked at Tim, who scowled.
‘I just finished a postgrad in music.’
He drummed his fingers along the edge of the bar, a parody of ‘Chopsticks’. ‘And how’s that sector doing?’
‘Not great. Though I haven’t been very proactive, to be honest. My sister’s a musician too – well, was – so I’m kind of relying on her for contacts. Her name’s Jen – Jennifer Whelan?’
Recognition animated his tired face. ‘That’s your sister? I saw her perform a solo at the National Concert Hall once. Christ, she was amazing.’ I must have looked crestfallen, because he added, ‘You’re exceptional, too. I mean that.’
I felt my cheeks darken, tighten. I hated the bitterness I felt about Jen’s success, and he’d picked up on it instantly. His restless fingers caught the back of my wrist, tapping gently. No ring, I noticed.
‘A college friend of mine is a conductor with the Philharmonic Choir. He’s always on the lookout for young talent. I’ll put in a word for you.’
We ended up leaving at the same time. He stood swaying gently in the car park, looking up at the sky, where the moon was a fierce yellow disc. He threw me a smile, which – I had just begun to notice – seemed weighed down with sadness, always, like that of the recently bereaved.
‘The moon’s not where I left it,’ he said, as though it were his chariot home and now he was stuck. I looked up: the moon did seem to be on the move, clouds streaking across it like shadow puppets.
Before leaving he kissed me goodnight. I closed my eyes, and the dry leaves skittered around our feet like insects. It was brief, and not quite inappropriate, but I could tell from the look he gave me that he was surprised at himself.
*
There was a framed newspaper clipping of Liam in the bar. It was on the way to the women’s toilets; I suspected he didn’t know it was there. In it, a younger, slimmer Liam sat beaming at his new ministerial desk; behind him were portraits of his predecessors, including his father. The accompanying article was a long, thinly veiled warning: he’d better not let down the family name. It was after reading this that I decided to sleep with him.
I’d only been with young men before, and it was different. There was the paunch to be negotiated. His arms, always in shirtsleeves, were almost translucent. His greying stubble chafed my face. But he still had his hair, thick and springy, and up close his eyes were beautiful; they pinned me down as he moved over me, twin blue follow spots. Afterwards we lay side by side, laughing quietly, and he held my hand at arm’s length, examining my fingers, measuring, saying, ‘Oh Grace, I must get you a job.’
I believed him. I fizzed with possibilities. I liked the way people looked when Liam would lean across the bar to kiss my cheek, or when he put his hand on my back, his fingers chiselling either side of my spine.
Tim didn’t like it. ‘Have you got daddy issues or what?’ I suspected that he wanted to bar Liam, or fire me, or both.
I was making a spectacle of myself. I was arriving in the real world.
*
One particular night, Liam said an early, lingering goodbye. He was attending a business breakfast – whatever that was – in Naas the next morning, and would be expected to ‘work the room’, he told me, making deadl
y serious air quotes. I didn’t mind. I had taken to pulsing Bach through my headphones on the walk home and the quiet afterwards seemed like something precious. I wanted to go to bed in that quiet, not be confronted by a frazzled, sleep-deprived Jen. But I could hear Ruán crying from the corridor.
The apartment was dark, except for light under the toilet door. I tiptoed into Ruán’s room, picked the furious bundle up. I shushed him, rocked him. I was good with him now. The first time I’d held him, in the hospital, I’d been a wreck. Instead of enjoying the moment, I’d thought of the cold tiles flooring the ward, of his breakability should he slip from my arms. I remembered touching a hesitant finger to his cheek, feeling the slight give of his skin, realising how rough my own hide really was.
‘You’re home late,’ said Jen, from behind me. ‘This fella’s been kicking up all night, haven’t you?’
Jen took the baby from my arms; something about this transaction still made me anxious, and I tended to hold on too long. This night, however, I felt warm and happy, and I ended up telling her, through Ruán’s cries, about the night of the sing-song; how the charming, if borderline alcoholic politician had promised to help me find work.
‘Wait,’ said Jen, ‘wait, this isn’t Liam Kelleher we’re talking about? You do know his story, right?’
‘Yeah, he got chucked out of government. So Tim says. Whatever.’
‘Do you know why?’
My buzz was slipping away. ‘Does it matter?’
‘He shagged his secretary. Got her pregnant, for fuck’s sake. She was really young, like your age? The wife left him. It was a total circus, it was all over the papers and Vincent Browne and everything.’
The news hit me like a drenching. ‘Well, he . . . he wouldn’t be the first politician, I guess.’
She smirked. ‘Ah, he’s hardly Clinton. It wasn’t glamorous. He was after refusing to bring in a civil-partnership bill, banging on about the Constitution, about family values. And then the secretary broke her silence. Yeah, he was a bit undermined after that. He had to go.’
I nodded slowly, my throat thickening.
‘God!’ said Jen, jiggling Ruán on her shoulder. ‘What kind of creeps do you get in that place?’
‘He’s not the worst,’ I said, and Jen laughed lightly in my face.
*
Google gave me more on Liam Kelleher than I really cared to have. I loaded up my iPod with podcasts and took long walks with his voice in my ear, by turns manipulative, defensive, reasonable. I used Jen’s credit card to get past website paywalls, digging into Liam’s archived past. I found his children on Facebook – they were not so much younger than me. I watched videos of him at election count centres, being hoisted and bounced on shoulders, trying to look dignified and somehow managing it. I read the secretary’s exclusives to a Sunday redtop, gushing about being whisked away to London and Paris, about champagne in bed. I hadn’t got champagne in bed.
At work, I tried to pretend everything was normal, but I couldn’t do it. We got bad at the kissing. The timing was off; we even started missing each other’s mouths. It was only later I realised it was because he was drawing back. ‘Oh, that was a one-time thing, Grace,’ he told me eventually, as if I’d tried to use expired coupons.
One night he came in with a man who could only have been a conductor, which is to say he looked like a maths professor and used his hands a lot. I tried not to look at them. Liam’s voice, to my ear, rose above the rumbling din of wine-bar conversation. I could sense his confusion at my distance, the sidelong way he watched me. I let Tim serve them. When I had no choice but to walk past them to fetch a bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Liam seized my wrist.
‘I want a word with you.’
I couldn’t look at him. I focused instead on the triangle of white shirt beneath the lapels of his jacket – the skin underneath, I knew, was almost as white.
‘This is Kevin, my old college friend. Kevin, this is the girl I was telling you about.’
‘Jennifer Whelan’s sister, my my,’ said the conductor, smiling in a way that made me wonder how much he had been told. ‘You’ll have to give us a recital, so.’
I backed off, feeling Tim’s stare on me. But I knew, whether he fired me or not – whether I had an audience or not – by the end of the night I would be sliding onto the piano’s polished bench like I was taking cover. It was all I was good for; it was my way out. I would flex my fingers, skim them along the surface of the keys. Eyes up, don’t overthink it. Skip, skip, skip along.
A Winter Harmonic
Mike McCormack
Blood Horizon
So I got word: there was a man out there and this man had a cure and I could have it at a price. And if I found my way to him and told him what was wrong or needed fixing I could be fairly certain that he would lend an ear. All I had to do was give him the facts, lay them before him as clearly as possible. And while the chances were that he wouldn’t have the cure on him straight away I was assured that I would only have to wait a few days, a week, max. He would go away and do whatever he had to do and then get back to me.
One way or another he would sort me out.
He wouldn’t see me stuck.
That was the word.
So I waited in a car park outside town; I must have been there a good hour. Cars coming and going in the grey light and the rain pissing down, a filthy day in November.
I had the sheet of paper with the diagnosis and the list of symptoms I’d logged over the last month. Dizziness, nausea, jelly legs, feet on fire, vertigo . . . There was a knock on the side window.
‘Is that the list?’
‘Yes.’
‘Show it here.’
He shielded the sheet of paper from the rain while he scanned the list up and down. Then he turned it over to make sure that there was nothing on the back.
‘And this is your phone number?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sound,’ he said, folding the sheet into his anorak. ‘You’ve set up the payment?’
‘It will transfer the moment I get what I need.’
That statement hung in the grey light, the rain spilling off the hood of his anorak. ‘Make sure it does, I don’t want meeting you again and you don’t want meeting me again. That would make neither of us happy.’
He straightened up and struck the roof a heavy wallop with his open hand before turning away.
Halloran
You wouldn’t know what sort of shit you’d come across out here: fridges and washing machines and bags of domestic rubbish; abandoned cars once in a while, burnt-out vans. Wads of silage cover as well, twisted into balls and fucked into drains and culverts; all sorts of shit.
I came across two hundred bottles of piss once. No labelling or source markings on any of them. I thought it was whiskey when I first came upon them, a stash of whiskey, the same colour and everything. What the hell was a load of whiskey doing out in the open air like this I wondered. But there was no mistaking it when I screwed the cap off one of them – piss, two hundred plastic bottles of stale piss.
But these other things I’m talking about – pages glaring white against the burnt heather, fanned out across twenty or thirty yards. And two heavy rubbish bags torn back from the mouth, ragged strips flapping in the breeze. These old manilla folders lying across each other. A couple of hundred I thought at first. Later I would learn that this particular cache contained over three hundred and seventy files. Some had already been opened by the breeze and the pages were scattered off in a stream across the bog – some snagged in the heather, yellowed and bleached from sun and rain.
Overhead a massive blue sky with a few clouds and a thin breeze blowing through the knee-high heather. And if it was odd to be out here in late November in the middle of the bog looking at a cache of files labelled with names and numbers it was no less odd than the files themselves – these old manilla folders which obviously dated from a time before our digital age. And that’s what struck me about them, not the fact tha
t they were scattered here in the bog but that they themselves had been cut adrift from a world which had passed on.
I took out the phone and snapped a few pictures, tagged them with a time, date and GPS reference and then gathered up as much as I could to carry out to the van on the road. Three trips before I had the whole lot gathered up. Then I drove into the village and called on Nevin because he was the guard on duty that day.
Of course Nevin was glad to see me.
Nevin
I was not glad to see him.
Community wardens – they’re a fucking nuisance, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Bad news and nothing but. They have this arsehole of a job fostering relationships or mediating between the County Council and the community. And this gives them some sort of quasi-judicial powers – slapping fines for parking offences and various environmental infractions and signage violations and so on. Then monitoring the Nitrates Directive, Farm Plastics regulations, various quarrying guidelines and turf-cutting directives . . . all these new regulations which do nothing but criminalise so many rural practices and make the ordinary guard’s position awkward in the community.
So you have to be cautious when you see those lads pulling up in their little vans outside the barracks. Halloran and the hi-viz jacket on him.
I was sorting through a pile of summonses when he stood in the door.
‘You’re flat out,’ he said.
‘Doing a bit,’ I conceded. ‘What can I do for you?’ I wanted him to get to the point quickly because I knew full well that anything he had to say to me would bring nothing but trouble and hassle.
‘There’s something in the van you should look at.’
I sat back and shook my head. ‘I’ve told you before, if I go out and find that it’s a lump of silage cover you’ve pulled out of a drain or a culvert I won’t be happy.’